If you like race cars but are one of those “millennials” who doesn’t respect the longstanding institution that is “cable,” the good news is that Formula One’s new F1 TV streaming service is here. In the U.S., it’ll cost up to $11.99 a month to watch all of the F1 and none of the network television you could ever want.
F1 said last month that the service would be ready in time for the Spanish Grand Prix, which is this weekend, and it launched midway through this week.
The $11.99 price for F1 TV’s top tier, F1 TV Pro, is only if you’re a noncommittal type who likes to see if one team is going to dominate the whole season before, you know, committing. If you want to go ahead and give F1 a year of your life, the service is $99.99 annually, because “.99” prices to prevent adding another digit always make people feel better. Anyway, that’s about $8.33 a month. Or essentially $100 a year.
There’s also the option for a lesser subscription that doesn’t show live races, if you’re not into planning your schedule around whatever time zone F1 is in on a given weekend. That lower subscription is F1 TV Access, which is $2.99 a month or $26.99 a year and shows full replays and highlights from each session.
Here are the details on both, from the streaming site. Prices for different areas of the world are also on there:
The service will show 17 races this year, having missed the first four because it wasn’t ready. F1 wouldn’t say when it would be ready back in March, around the time ESPN had its absolute disaster of an opening F1 broadcast in the U.S.—one that included a bunch of commercials cut into the commercial-free coverage it paid to show from Sky Sports. F1 finally said at the end of April that the service would be ready this month, in time for the Spanish Grand Prix.
But ESPN fixed its Sky Sports broadcast and took commercials out for 2018, making it more than just bearable—it’s enjoyable, at least for people who still keep a cable subscription around. For those who don’t, you can watch F1 again, and again, and again, until you get sick, for between $3 and $12 a month.
It’s like a cheap amusement park. Cool!
Full disclosure: Jalopnik is owned by Univision, which holds the Spanish-language broadcast rights to F1 in the U.S.